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African Immigrants: Immigrating into A Racial Wealth Divide

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Editor's note: This post was originally published on the Huffington Post on 1/8/2018.

Historically and contemporarily, the topic of immigration ignites many of the passions revolving around the central socio-economic issues of the time. The immigration of African people to the United States deeply intersects with ongoing racial economic inequality and how the inequality of the past is being replicated into the future. Currently, the United States has an immigrant population of about 43.4 million, with African immigrants making up roughly 3.9% of all immigrants in 2009. These 1.7 million mostly Black immigrants come to this country in pursuit of the “American Dream” of economic opportunity and prosperity yet find that the racial economic inequality that has prevented most African Americans from ever fully participating in the “American Dream” also is a barrier to their economic advancement.

The number of Black immigrants living in the US has risen 13-fold from 1970 to 2010, increasing their share of the Black population from 1% to 10%. African immigrants make up about 40% of the Black immigrant population, with most Black immigrants coming from the West Indies. Like most immigrant groups, African immigrants create their own social enclave here in the United States, but this enclave exists within spaces defined by native social hierarchies and communities. African immigrants are disproportionately found in big American cities and usually carve out their own geographical concentration in an area that has historically been populated by African Americans. In the 2009 US Census, nearly 80% of African immigrants reported their race as “Black,” which is a major change from 1980 when 42% of African immigrants reported their race as White —likely reflecting a stronger presence of North African or Arab immigrants.